Thursday, March 28, 2013

Vikram Seth read a fair portion of his
1991 book of stories in verse, called Beastly
Tales from here and there. The occasion was the release of a
sumptuously illustrated version at the India Habitat Centre Amphitheatre in New Delhi.

Vikram Seth reading, takes flight

Not only did he read, but he answered
questions from the audience, interspersed with his reading of five of the tales.
He gave advice when asked about writing, recounted his journey in the literary
world starting as a humble economics student in Stanford, and talked about his
interest in several forms of art from calligraphy to painting and music.

The audience stayed late into the night,
for Vikram Seth was like a musician who is set on fire by the audience response.
He congratulated the illustrator, Prabha Mallya, and had the audience give her
several rounds of applause.

Prabha Mallya, illustrator of Beastly Tales, with Vikram Seth

And then he stayed back, liberally
engaging in conversation those who queued with books to be autographed. He
wrote personalised messages, and didn’t hesitate to share his vast stock of
knowledge and instant wit with those who waited patiently. It was two hours
before KumKum came to the head of the queue with two copies to be signed for
her grandchildren. He apologized graciously for the readers’ inconvenience, but
was indefatigable himself. And smiling.

Vikram Seth signing and smiling indefatigably

For a full account click below.

VS has been writing poems most of his
life. He became a published poet when P. Lal undertook to bring out his Mappings collection of poems in 1980, a
good six yearsbefore he published his first
novel.

Vikram Seth's mother, Leila Seth

One very hot summer in New Delhi in the
early nineties when he was wrestling with A
Suitable Boy, he found relief in writing these tales in verse. His family
was living at the time (mother Leila Seth being a judge) in Government
accommodation on Rajaji Marg, a house built by Laurie Baker, not Lutyens. A
friend at the British High Commission offered his place to write at 2, King
George’s Road in a much cooler building. As he sat in a corner and cooled his brain,
suddenly this idea of re-writing a Jataka tale (The Crocodile and the Monkey) came to him. One became two, and
multiplied to ten. Two of them were retellings of stories from India, two from
China, two from Ukraine, two from Greece, and the last two “were invented out of whole cloth,” The Frogand the Nightingale, and The
Elephant and The Tragopan.

They are children’s tales in that they
will delight children, but in many of them a vein of light satire runs through
to illuminate the contemporary scene. Therefore, mature adults too will find
the playfulness and allusiveness of the verse stories something to read and
savour.Lines like these (from The
Frogand the Nightingale)

…
the sumac tree

At whose
foot the frog each night

Minstrelled
on till morning light

show that VS does not write down to
children. He does not admit to other poets inhabiting his memory as he writes,
except Alexander Pushkin who started him on his writing career when he read Eugene Onegin in Charles Johnston’s
translation that faithfully transposes the Onegin sonnet stanza. We may quote
from the introductory stanza of that work these lines to represent the
prevailing mood of these animal verses of VS, tales which have

…been
spun

from threads
both sad and humoristic,

themes
popular or idealistic,

products of
carefree hours, of fun,

Pushkin aside, when VS writes in the
same story

Dumbstruck
sat the gaping frog

And the
whole admiring bog

he surely drew on Emily Dickinson’s poem
I’m nobody. Who are you? where these
well-knownlines occur:

How dreary to
be somebody!

How public,
like a frog

To tell your
name the livelong day

To an
admiring bog!

It is quite possible that Emily
Dickinson’s stanza about the frog lay dormant in the mind of VS, ready to snare
the phrase ‘admiring bog.’ But VS claims he is not directly influenced by any
poet, barring Pushkin, whose influence has been so durable that he writes an Onegin-style sonnet as the foreword for
every novel. Other authors he greatly admires are Heine, Leopardi, Du Fu, Wang
Wei (poet, painter, sculptor and calligrapher as well). Among Indian writers,
he called out Nirala (Suryakant Tripathi), Faiz whom he has translated, and
Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Mention was also made of the cult novel Chowringhee by Sankar, a Bengali author.
“I read Chowringhee many years ago in
a Hindi translation and lost myself in it for days. It was a wonderful experience—both
gripping and moving,” VS said somewhere.

Vikram Seth interacts with a reader

“I take inspiration from wherever I get
it, but you’ve got to fuse it with something of your own,” said the polymathic
VS.

The new illustrator of Beastly Tales (there has been a previous
illustrated edition), Prabha Mallya, was introduced by VS. She said she took
the animals to be people with humanfrailties and feelings, just as VS depicted them and that was a source of
inspiration for how she drew them. She took the key moments in the stories and tried
to show how the character of the animals was revealed. She hoped the readers
would enjoy the illustrations and they would spark something additionally.

Prabha Mallya, the illustrator, who drew by hand and cleaned it up in Photoshop

VS recounted the oft-told story of how
he became a novelist by accident after reading Charles Johnston’s translation
of Eugene Onegin to recover from an
all-night session with computer models of demographics when he studied at
Stanford University in the eighties. He spent a year telling the story of
motley California people: techies, viniculturists, activists, lovers straight,
bi-and gay, and anti-nuclearprotesters,
remaining amazingly true to the eighties scene in the Bay Area. It has
wonderful nature description too. His
purpose was not to become a writer at that stage; it was to write a specific
poem he became obsessed about after finding the ideal template in the Eugene Onegin translation. The result
was The Golden Gate, TGG.

Vikram Seth with his audience at Habitat Amphitheatre

From there VS left on a tour of China,
purportedly to collect data for his thesis, and returned to India by way of Sinkiang
and Tibet. Those travels gave rise to his account From Heaven Lake. When he returned with his rucksack, tanned
chocolate brown , and appeared at his parents’ home their servant could not
recognize him: “Liaquat, hamein pahchante
ho nahin?” he had to ask. When he first wrote the account of his travels at
the instance of his father, he gave it to a friend to read, who’d travelled
with him. Her critical comment was that she could not make out the smell, the
sound, or sense the light and other things. She couldn’t smell the rug or feel
the bumpy road they travelled.It was
too flat. That was the impetus for VS to learn the power of descriptive
narration. His friend said the book
could not just be edited into shape by tinkering to provide the missing
elements; the whole book had to be re-written. He lost a friend, thereby, but
gained a travel book that was published.

Vikram Seth with his audience at Habitat Amphitheatre

VS stated that when he was called to
give a learned bashan at a Mexico
environmental conference, he trotted out The
Elephant and The Tragopan. Withthe neta class represented by characters
like

… the great
Bigshot Number One

Shri Padma
Bhushan Gobardhun

and the description of the water
shortage the animals struggle with when human intervention goes wrong, the
story had all the incisive and insightful views VS might have covered in a more
academic talk. Certainly next year as the elections come round we’ll see more
of this kind of shenanigans, “which brings me to A Suitable Girl, but that’s a forbidden subject.”

VS paid compliments to the illustrator,
Prabha,for her wonderful compositions
which he thought were even eerie. “She seems to have understood my animals
better than me. I hope she doesn’t take to writing because I’ll be out of a
job.” No fear of that …

VS mentioned that he has taken up
illustration too. We know about his calligraphy and his wood sculpture from
previous references. When he was asked by the publisher of The Rivered Earth to contribute some of his calligraphy he didn’t
hesitate about Devnagiri and Urdu, but when it came to Chinese (a section deals
with the poems of Du Fu, translated by him), he inquired of his master, Zhao
Yizhou, whether the disciple’s calligraphy would embarrass the master. VS was
reassured, but Zhao Yizhou said he should not sign his calligraphy as the
custom was not to do that until one had disciples of one’s own. You can read
more about the paintings and calligraphy of VS at

Were it not for his being gripped by ASG
at the moment, he would be doing portraiture and landscapes, said ourirrepressible author. In future he might
illustrate this book, but could he do it with the percipience and insight of
Prabha Mallya? One day he should have a colophon, like the takhallus in a ghazal.

About the length of his verse stories,
VS conceded that the attention span of kids is limited, but if the stories have a
soporific effect when read to them in bed, that too might be a desirable end
at bedtime. He added, “I rather think I wouldn’t have read a long book if I
hadn’t written one!”

Prabha Mallya, the illustrator, draws in the book for KumKum

VS read from Mohini Gupta’s Hindi
translation of The Frogand the Nightingale and noted the
different rhythmic form that gave it life. “You can see the quality of it,”
said VS. It was part of the CBSE syllabus five or six years ago. The author
then read the whole poem, lingering over the humorous passages, and acting out
the two voices, the deceitful frog and the flattered nightingale. At the end VS
remarked, “I don’t know why people think these stories are for children.” Children,
he noted, are read to from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, many of which are quite grim,
with plenty of violence, though no sex.

A woman asked what came first in his
verse, the thought or the metre? VS answered that the first line came to him,
for example,

On Ganga’s
greenest isle

Lived Kuroop
the crocodile:

The rest came naturally as he wrote, for
having got into that metre it was unlikely he’d stray. The first line is like
dropping a seed into a supersaturated solution; the whole thing crystallises.
He added he hadn’t thought of that analogy before. "I never thought I'd
write a novel in verse. It was the inspiration from Pushkin that led me to
writing verse. I took as a template, his stanza, meter and rhyming scheme,"
said Seth.

Another person asked if he had any words
of encouragement for young writers. His apposite reply was not to get put off
by the frogs of the world; VS drew attention to the frog’s ironical critique at
the end about the nightingale’s song:

… she should have known

That your
song must be your own.

“Use your own voice,” therefore.

Another reader wanted to know which
aspects of writing a novel he found most difficult – dialogue, description,
character sketch, … VS replied, “You don’t have to describe, but they [the
characters] talk themselves into being, and after a while you think you know
them.” About describing places VS referred to his earlier comment about
re-writing From Heaven Lake.

Regarding plot, VS confessed he finds it
difficult still. Do the characters take a life of their own and dictate what
happens next, or can he plot them out beforehand? It’s difficult to answer. A
hint was dropped by VS when he said that for the duration of his writing A Suitable Girl he is not budging out of
South Asia, adding Myanmar to that geographical arc. For it’s about how Lata of
ASB finds a bride for her grandson – a generation is skipped to bring the novel
into the present – and he needs to keep his active mental focus here, and his
subconscious too. “I don’t want to disperse my imagination when writing ASG,”
he said.

He noted the maxim, “Show, don’t tell”
is also subject to qualification. If you show too much, you don’t give the
reader play with hiser imagination. It’s necessary to maintain a discreet
ambiguity so that different readers can arrive at their own decoding. Don’t
over-explain. Another rule is not to expound entire ideologies in a novel –
it’s irrelevant, unless it is the obsession of a character in the novel.

Regarding research for a novel, VS
stated the purpose is to get things right; and the criterion of getting it
right is to ask whether the characters in the novel would do that, or wear
that, or say that, etc. The idea is not to lay it on thick (as Melville does in
Moby Dick about whales, or Amitav Ghosh does in his novels about opium and
rubber plantations – these are my examples, not those of VS). In An
Equal Music VS had to get the strings of the various instruments right for
the pieces the quartet was playing. How well he did that may be gauged from the
comment of the music critic of an influential Italian newspaper when the novel
was translated: “No European novel before has managed to convey the psychology,
the technical abilities, even the human potentialities of those who practise
music for a living.” VS acknowledges his violinist partner of that period,
Philippe Honoré, in the dedication for his contribution
to AEM.

The tail-end of the queue shows KumKum waiting to get her copies signed

VS next read fromp.63 The
Cat and the Cock, upon a reader’s demand for ‘cat’ as subject of the next
animal story he would read. It’s an Ukrainian story. VS noted that cocks greet
the dawn with different cries according to the host language of the story. In
Greek it is Kiki-riki. In Hindi, Kuk- ru-koo. In English Cock-a-doodle-doo! VS continued the
story as the Cat deceives all five fox cubs to rescue his friend the Cock from
the pot the Fox was preparing for him. At the lines

Just for you
I’ll sing a song —

Come
outside, and sing along.

VS suggested it deserves a raga. One
virtue of the story is that if your parents read it to you as a child, you’ll
be asleep by the time the vixen’s fourth cub is captured in a sack by the Cat.

The third story VS read was The Eagle and the Beetle on p.39 of the
book. By contrast with the previous one, this is a story in which the animal
could not be rescued from its fate, for the evil Beetle constantly pursued the
Eagle to spill her eggs out of the nest.Though it was getting on in time one look at the audience in the
amphitheatre confirmed that they were all transfixed by the warm, dear,
baritone voice, articulating precisely and providing the kind of gestures that
would keep a child rapt in attention. Here he was doing it to a crowd of
people, many young, some old, and with only a few children! The moral of the story is

… the strong who crush the weak

May not
be shown the other cheek.

Vikram Seth Absolut orange bottle in Chinese script painting

The fourth story VS read was The Crocodile and the Monkey on p.1 of
the book. Pollywog, VS explained, is a tadpole. There are plenty of lines which
stirred gentle chuckles in the audience, for example

He has been
so kind to me;

Think how
sweet his heart must be.

…

When you
gaze into her eyes

You will
enter Paradise.

…

I will let
you choose your end.

After all,
you are my friend.

…

To the
hollow where I keep

Heart and
liver when I sleep,

Half my
brain, a fingernail,

Cufflinks,
chutney, and spare tail.

At this point VS realized he was there
to sign books, the commercial part of the evening, and asked everyone to write
down the names to whom he should address his autograph. Nowadays there is a
great boom in doubling vowels and consonants in names, Aarti, for instance.

Vikram Seth signing

When a person said his wife had a single
A because “she was born before the ban” (on single As), VS asked if they have a
child. No, came the answer. “Well you must try if you can.” It’s the sort of
facile rhyming that VS acknowledges becomes second nature when you are into
doggerel. I don’t think he meant Beastly
Tales, though.

Asked a question about Two Lives, he said it was an emotional
roller-coaster to write the book about his great aunt (German) and great uncle.
They acted in loco parentis, when he
went to study at an English school and took him in. They spoke in German to
each other and he had to learn, and even learn the old style of writing German.
He did a lot research to uncover the letters between them. But a book cannot be
sunk under a load of research, although he did consult microfiches in Israel
since his great aunt’s relatives had died in the Nazi persecution of Jews. He
has written about them, warts and all. It is a personal, and yet a historical
account.

“I like to start a book with a plain
statement,” VS said and gave the example of ASB:

‘You
too will marry a boy I choose,’ said Mrs Rupa firmly to her younger daughter.

and AEM:

The branches
are bare, the sky tonight a milky violet. It is not quiet here, but it is
peaceful. The wind ruffles the black water towards me.

and TL:

When I was
seventeen I went to live with my great-uncle and great-aunt in England. He was
Indian by origin, she German. They were both sixty. I hardly knew them at the
time.

“I write as clearly as possible. What I
write must ring true to the characters I’m writing about.” If more authors
would follow such simple guidelines there would be a good deal more of readable books,
but then they need his consummate technical skill with language! Ask him to
make a crossword about the conversation you’ve just had with him and he’ll hand
you one in 20 mins, complete with clues. Ask him for an acrostic poem on the
name of a person he knows and it will probably take him 10 minutes.

His prose is a reflection of his lucid
mind. It may hold many things at once, but when the expression comes out on
paper the writing is measured and gentle; even the satire arrives with a smile.
VS said he doesn’t italicise foreign words (this triggered some applause) for a
reader can form an idea without the need for a glossary. Suddenly he exclaimed “Where’s
my family?” That was Sashi Mama and Usha Mami, to whom the book is dedicated.
There they were, perched high on the last seats in the covered amphitheatre,
along with his mother, Leila Seth, and father, Prem.

Vikram Seth's family at the back of the amphitheatre

A person asked, what makes him write?
VS’s answer was characteristic of his approach. “It's a difficult question.
I’ve to be inspired to write.” Ideas enter his head but he is only partly
disciplined. At this point he narrated the joke about Mark Twain being awarded
an honorary doctorate; that meant he could respond to a call for a doctor in a
crowd. (VS has one too, in default of the Econ doctorate he missed at Stanford).
Once Mark Twain was taking the steamer from New York to Southampton (or vice
versa) when a girl swooned and the call went out for a doctor. By the time Mark
Twain came scurrying, he found two other Doctors, of Divinity, had beaten him
to the gallantry! To use a cricketing term, this is the use of the leg glance when you reply
to a question.

“OBSESSION is the great substitute for
DISCIPLINE,” in his case, VS averred. He wanted to know what happened to Lata
in ASB. That was why he pursued the story to the end, and it took ten years. Similarly, for ASG in the
present time.

Another important pointer for writing
from VS is this: “You must have an inbuilt bullshit detector.”

Rejections are early companions in the
lives of writers. Chatto & Windus rejected ASB. TGG had 30 rejections
before he could publish it, a great blessing for him, for it changed his life’s
trajectory.

When someone inquired why there isn’t an
audiobook of his poems, VS replied there is one, sung by a Shakespearean
actress.

For some reason the conversation with
the audience drifted to river dolphins and VS was a fund of information on the
subject: the Gangetic river dolphin he has seen near Benares, the Irrawady
river dolphin thrives in the delta of that river. These are nearly blind as the
muddy water does not afford much navigational opportunity by sight; they use
their audible clicks and sonar. There is a river dolphin in the upper reaches
of the Amazon, pink in colour, with perfectly good vision. But once again when
it comes to the muddy delta of the Amazon, the dolphins native to that habitat
are blind and navigate by sonar.

A reader persisted in asking about A Suitable Girl and was told, “She’s a
shy girl and won’t remove her ghungta
in public.”

For the fifth and last poem, VS chose The Hare and the Tortoise, p.47 of the
illustrated book. It is not an immoral, but an amoral, take on Aesop’s fable of
the same name, and ends with the surprise ending:

Thus the
hare was pampered rotten

And the
tortoise was forgotten.

Half the book, 91 pages of exhilarating
rhyming and surprising stories told by the master, made people stay until
the end, and then another three hours for getting their copies of VS’s works
signed! He addressed each one in the snaking queue outside as though they were
a long lost friend, and must be specially taken care of by inscribing a thoughtfully
conceived and completely individual wish on the fly leaf …

Vikram Seth signing for KumKum, two copies, one for each pair of grandchildren

That’s VS, the genius not far from you.

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